Today, United States District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan issued LIBOR VII, in which the court granted class certification under Rule 23(b)(3) to a class of plaintiffs who bought over-the-counter instruments that paid interest in terms of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and who allege that LIBOR-setting banks conspired to suppress LIBOR during the 2007-09 financial crisis. View Full Post

This coming Thursday, I’ll give a talk about Preparing Difficult Witnesses for Trial at the University of Texas law school Civil Litigation Conference in Austin. My series of posts on the subject ends with this one — and it’s the best one of them all, in my view. View Full Post

In this penultimate installment of my series on preparing difficult witnesses (DWs) for trial, we get to some of the real nitty-gritty: Learning the story of me, doing a full interview, and then explaining what matters and why. As will become clear, the sequence matters — a lot. View Full Post

In Part 3 of our Preparing Difficult Witnesses for Trial series (see Part 1 and Part 2), we study a key aspect of trial-team dynamics and the necessity of getting face-to-face with difficult witnesses (DWs).
Include a non-lawyer on the trial team.View Full Post

In Preparing Difficult Witnesses for Trial — Part 1, we looked at the four major types of trial witnesses. We also sketched “some of the more significant ethical considerations that govern your dealings with each category”. We then took “a short and non-exhaustive look at the two major privileges that trial lawyers deal with: the lawyer-client privilege and the lawyer work-product doctrine.”
In this post, we’ll cover the necessity for getting really ready and something you may find surprising — the importance of caring. View Full Post

For your client to win at trial, the trial lawyer in you must tell a human story, one that moves jurors to decide in your client’s favor. Flesh-and-blood witnesses fill essential roles in the drama. So-so ones will turn the story to mush, and bad ones will allow your friend on the other side to beat you and your client about the head and neck with it. View Full Post

Existential threshold
The number of companies that can bring treble-damages claims against drug manufacturers for violating federal antitrust law has dwindled. The scarcity has grown so acute that last week it crossed an existential threshold.
For the first time ever, a federal judge in Philadelphia ruled that a class of direct pharmaceuticals purchasers did not meet the “numerosity” requirement of Rule 23(a)(1) for class-action treatment. View Full Post

U.S. District Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg ruled on August 28, 2017 that a class of 24 to 25 direct purchasers did not satisfy the “numerosity” requirement of Rule 23(a)(1) for class certification. Florence Drug Co. of Florence, Inc. v. Cephalon, Inc.View Full Post

Pay-for-delay
Listen up, direct purchasers of pharmaceuticals.
Since 2013, pay-for-delay antitrust cases against Big Pharma could succeed if they alleged that a brand-name drug company had made “large and unjustified” payments for a competitor to postpone bringing a generic substitute to market. View Full Post

Because arbitration
If you’ve ever felt that Uber costs more than it should, you can forget about fixing that in court. Under a new ruling by the Second Circuit, no matter how good your claim and regardless of how much money it involves, Uber can beat you every time. View Full Post

You will recall that two years ago Volkswagen got in $14.7 billion worth of class action trouble for rigging software in its diesel cars to fake compliance with U.S. emission standards. The
We now learn that Volkswagen didn’t act alone.
Something rotten in Stuttgart
The German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel revealed over the weekend that, starting in 2006, Volkswagen teamed up with its Teutonic rivals BMW and Mercedes-Benz (Daimler) to avoid competing for customers. View Full Post